


Anansi spins a web

by lordliam



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-05
Updated: 2019-04-05
Packaged: 2020-01-05 06:59:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,593
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18360974
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lordliam/pseuds/lordliam
Summary: Statement of Adisa Kenyatta, regarding the disappearance of his brother talib. Original statement given twelfth of July, 2008.





	Anansi spins a web

I know, deep down, it wasn’t really my fault. But that isn’t what the police would think. You can assure me all of this will be confidential?  
Good.   
My brother Talib was always… observant. I could never keep secrets from him growing up. He’d always know where my private hideouts were, where i kept my most treasured possessions… I don’t know how. I suppose he was just good at looking. But maybe it was more than that.   
I really did love him, but he was a terribly difficult person to love. He had to get his way. No matter the circumstance, once he’d gotten an idea into his head nothing anyone said could make him even think of compromise. What was odd was that… this really didn’t occur to me until after… it happened. Growing up i always felt we were equals, but if i really strain my mind, i can’t honestly think of one decision i made for myself. His way was always what we did, because that’s how it worked, and his way was right. He was in control.  
You don’t want to hear about my childhood though do you. You want to know what happened to Talib. Well he’s dead. Hopefully. He has to be. I don't want to think about the alternative.  
When I was young, a woman came to our village. A storyteller. When exactly, the woman moved into our little village, i couldn’t tell you. I know there was a time before she lived in our midst, but it’s all a foggy memory. Where exactly she lived in our village….. I couldn't tell you that either. I know I visited her squalid hut, brass cooking pot boiling over the fire, the gentle weaving lines I stared rapt at, embroidered on the ornate tapestries inside. I visited that hut and listened to her stories many many times… But every visit… I don't think I ever took the same route from our hut to hers. I’m not even sure why i started visiting in the first place. Talib never came with me. He didn’t like the woman’s stories.   
At some point, I visited her house and she no longer was there. Instead on her chair, sat a book. Have you ever heard of Anansi the Spider? It’s an old West-African folktale character, Anansi the Trickster they called him. He’s quite a popular character in the oral tradition of our tales, always scheming, always planning his next move. Well, the book was apparently a collection of his fables. I don’t know why she gave it to me. I couldn’t read. I don’t think I ever visited the woman after that. But I kept the book. It didn’t mean anything to me. Knowing what i know now, i think my illiteracy saved me. Or maybe Talib was always the one the spiders wanted.   
That was 20 years ago. I’m honestly surprised it took that long for me to see what was in those pages. But I suppose Anansi is anything, he is patient.   
I found the book 3 months ago. There wasn’t anything special about finding it, I was simply going through some of my old things. I’m honestly not sure how I hadn’t seen it before. But as i ripped off the packing tape and peered into the cluttered pile inside, there it was, nestled into the corner underneath some old stuffed animals. I picked it up and examined it, running my fingers all over the rough surface. The book was bound in a black, thin wood, with faint cracking lines just barely beginning to show. Carved, white letters that I could now understand read, Anansi spins a web.   
I shouldn’t have opened it. I shouldn’t have read what was inside. But i did… and what was inside was NOT a collection of famous Anansi tales.   
For how ornate the binding seemed to be, it wasn’t worth it. I was startled to find only a single page on the inside. With a single couplet written on it in stark, black scratches. 

And as Anansi spun his wheel,  
What came around was his next meal.

The words unnerved me, but I was a bit taken aback to find how barren the book really was, so didn’t think much of it. Just a weird relic of bygone days. I put it on my kitchen table, planning to put it on my list of items to donate.   
The next day the book was on my bedside table. I know I didn’t put it there. I reached over and brushed the wooden surface with my finger. I think i wanted to see if i was imagining it. The cover was warm to the touch, and just a bit sticky. It felt… very.. very… wrong I didn’t want to open it, to read the single ominous page again. But i did.   
I gasped. During the night, the page had changed. There was still only a single scrawled couplet leering from the paper, but it wasn’t the same as the night before. 

 

The words Anansi never mocks?  
Always keep your door unlocked.

I was shaken to say the least. That’s when i knew i was dealing with something that might be otherworldly. Mama had always told us stories of the gods playing tricks on their children. I just had not believed them until now. That night when I went to sleep I didn’t lock my door. I always lock my door. But I didn’t.   
I woke up in the middle of the night to my front door slamming closed and Talib sprinting  
into my room. Very short of breath, he explained that a man had attacked him on his way home. He’d managed to outrun him, but didn’t have enough stamina to make it home, so he stopped at my house. He was grateful the door was unlocked. I let him stay at my place that night, but i don't think he slept. I dreamt of unraveling tapestries that night, pulling the thread until the whole cloth fell apart like a spool.   
Again the couplet was different the next morning.

Anansi found a key today,   
Where he put it who can say.

I don’t remember taking my brother/s keys. But I did. And he missed his train home. The same train that derailed killing every passenger on board. I knew it wasn’t a coincidence. I knew the book had saved my brother. It was at that point that i began to think the book was helping me. I thought it could see the future and was warning me. I began to hold it’s messages in the highest regard, no matter how odd they were. And so life went on. Every morning the book would shift it’s writing, a new couplet, a new obtuse task for me to do. I still have no memory of actually doing any of the actions described. But somehow, each instruction saved my brother from certain death.   
I caught and released a specific fish that would have given him a deadly parasite if he’d eaten it. I left a empty box of wood at an address of a person i did not know, and my brother didn’t drown when the Matsutsi bridge collapsed. It was like I was living the butterfly effect, but every action was taken specifically to spare my brother from certain death. I started to trust the book. I got careless.

And as they sat there on the ledge,   
Anansi pushed him o’er the edge.

I do not know how me and my brother came to be standing on Gambaga Scarp, the cliffs overlooking the Volga river. Perhaps we were vacationing there. Probably not. But how could i know… i knew what i had to do. My brother was going to die in some gruesome way unless i followed the instructions of the book. So i came up behind him as he was staring out towards the horizon. And in a fit of panic, I pushed.   
I saw his face as he fell, the look of complete betrayal. I heard his scream as he fell, the blood curdling cry of a man who knows he is about to die. But my brother never hit the ground. Because something was waiting at the bottom. I watched as far below, two dark spiny legs stretched out from a crack in the cliff. They held a net made entirely from silk. I watched with perfect, horrible clarity as the jagged, spinster shape with far too many eyes emerged from the cliff side. In one, horribly smooth, practiced motion, the thing in the cliff snared my brother in its trap. For a split second the air was filled with thousands of strands of spider silk, floating gently in the breeze and glinting with the reflection of the setting sun. And then it was gone. The air was clear of silk, and the cliffside was empty. Except for the echoing of my brother’s scream across the ravine.   
I know the book made me do it. I know that. But i can’t help thinking... I was lucid when i pushed him. I remember it clearly. I know i was acting on my own free will. But my brother still ended up in Anansi’s web  
I tried to get rid of the book any way i could.. It would always return to my bedside table unharmed. I don’t think I have much longer. The page read a new couplet for me today.

Anansi lays you down to sleep,  
The spinner’s feast is his to reap.


End file.
